Saturday, December 1, 2012

Right Opportunism in the CPUSA

The following is a discussion article for the upcoming Communist Party USA national convention. I am reposting it here from ML Today as an exploration of the development of Right Opportunism in the CPUSA. As Comrade Stalin has said, “Under capitalist conditions
the Right deviation in communism signifies a tendency … of a section of
the Communists to depart from the revolutionary line of Marxism in the
direction of Social-Democracy.” For an important analysis
of the historical roots of Right Opportunism in the CPUSA, see Harry Haywood‘s article, “The Degeneration of the CPUSA in the 1950s.” See also the section on antirevisionism of the Marxist-Leninist Study Guide:The Old Bug of Right Opportunism Returns
by Mark Anderson
Although Marxist-Leninist terminology has fallen out of vogue with
the top leadership of our Party, there’s no avoiding the use of precise,
scientific language if one is to analyze contemporary phenomena from a
Communist point of view. To do so would be like trying to have a
discussion of Newtonian physics without using words like force or
matter.
For several years our Party has been suffering from the corrosive
effects of what Marx, Lenin and other Marxists called opportunism,
specifically right opportunism. This was not name-calling on their part,
but was instead an attempt to define a historically determined
phenomenon that persists to this day.Former CPUSA chairman Gus Hall, in a 1979
article titled “Opportunism: the Destructive Germ,” defined right
opportunism as “an unnecessary and unprincipled accommodation and, in
the end, a capitulation to the enemy. It is a sacrificing of the
longer-term and more basic interests of the working class and the people
behind the guise of getting concessions on some immediate questions.”
He called opportunism a recurrent “virus,” an “old bug,” that the
Party, surrounded as it is by bourgeois pressures, had to constantly be
on guard against.
Generally speaking, right opportunism means sacrificing principle for
short-term gains. It means an excessive readiness to make compromises
with the capitalist class at the expense of the working class, to “get
along” with capitalist order, to “go with the flow” and work for small
changes around the edges rather than for fundamental change. It’s
closely related to the concept of reformism.
The “left” variant of opportunism is characterized by sectarian
phrase-mongering detached from the real world, whose objective effect is
to perpetuate the established order much like its right variant does.
Historically, right opportunism has been the primary danger within
the CPUSA. In its most extreme form, it led to the dissolution of the
Party under the leadership of Earl Browder in the 1940s. It also badly
split the Party in 1991 when a right-opportunist faction tried to
capture the leadership of the Party and transform it into a reformist,
social-democratic association.
The right-opportunist affliction in our Party today is manifested in
several ways, most notably in a de-emphasizing of the class struggle.
For example, instead of helping the working class understand that its
interests are irreconcilably opposed to the monopoly capitalist class,
and organizing to wage struggle on that basis, the right-opportunist
trend advocates all-class unity against political conservatives in a
classless “battle for democracy.”
It places strategic emphasis on supporting more liberal or
“enlightened” elements of the ruling, capitalist class as the lesser of
two evils, particularly in the electoral arena, until such time as the
conservatives or the “ultra-right” are decisively defeated. What would
constitute such a decisive defeat is never spelled out, however. Even
now, with a Democratic president and strong Democratic majority in
Congress, advocates of this approach insist it must be retained.
To justify its position, this trend invokes Georgi Dimitrov’s theory
of the popular front against fascism in the 1930s, and a variant of that
position developed by CPUSA leaders in the early 1980s, when Ronald
Reagan came to power. Yet this trend is quick to point out that we do
not have fascism today, nor does it appear to be imminent.
In practice, this all-class strategy means that the Party refrains
from criticizing its would-be capitalist-class allies, mutes its
criticism of the big monopolies (e.g. refrains from calling for their
nationalization), exaggerates the significance of differences within the
ruling class, and plays down basic Marxist concepts like the class
character of the capitalist state.
One result of this approach is a blunting of working-class
consciousness and socialist consciousness, and a weakening of the
Party’s fighting spirit.
Among other right-opportunist ideas afflicting our Party are these:The capitalist system is not moribund, as Lenin said, but is
relatively strong. It is not in general crisis. Therefore, the U.S.
party’s strategy should be solely to win attainable reforms within the
system rather than advocate capitalism’s revolutionary replacement with
socialism.Anti-monopoly strategy, let alone anti-capitalist propaganda, is
too advanced for this stage of struggle, and the main focus should
instead be on rebuffing the most extreme right and the Republican Party.Historically, socialism has shown itself to be unable to solve
economic and social problems. Central planning is a failure; a
market-oriented economy is the way to go. It’s not even clear anymore
what socialism is.
The class struggle has ceased to be the central pivot around which all questions revolve.Racism and national oppression are gradually receding. It is no longer necessary to aggressively push for affirmative action.Issues of discrimination, anti-Semitism, and the struggle for the
full equality of African Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans,
Native Americans, Asian-Pacific and Arab Americans, LGBT, women, and
youth no longer requires special attention. Party Commissions and
special demands on these questions are unnecessary.The term “U.S. imperialism” is too simplistic. The U.S.
government, especially under President Obama, can play a positive and
humanitarian role in world politics. For this reason it is permissible
for the U.S. military and NATO forces to occupy other nations like Iraq
and Afghanistan, impose “democratic” reforms, and secure neoliberal
economic advantages. Peace and solidarity work is therefore not as
important as it once was.Electoral politics should be limited to work within the
Democratic Party. Any attempt to go outside the two-party system is
sectarian and futile. Running candidates on the Communist Party ticket
is especially narrow and self-defeating.The CPUSA is bogged down by dogmatism, sectarianism and rigidity.
Many of the stock slanders of the Party are indeed justified. It may
not survive unless it abandons its outdated dogmas, including the dogma
that it should play a leading, vanguard role.The Party should emulate social democracy and seek to merge with
the broad left. The “Communist plus” should be given a quiet burial, and
Marxist-Leninist education and literature (including a printed news
paper) are relatively unimportant. Strong party organization is no
longer necessary.
The basis for the growth and development of this negative,
right-opportunist trend in our Party consists of several elements,
including: (1) the relatively long period of the capitalist system’s
expansion, at least until the most recent crisis, and the resulting
ideological pressures of ruling-class ideology; (2) the continuing
ideological fallout from the demise of the USSR and the Eastern European
socialist countries, (3) the weak class composition of our own Party —
the insufficient number of workers in the leadership and membership (a
number being further reduced by the passing away of many working-class
Party veterans); (4) the inadequate theoretical training of the party
membership in the basics of Marxism-Leninism, a problem compounded by
the traditional U.S. baggage of “pragmatism” and “American
exceptionalism”; (5) the broader influence of reformism and opportunism
in the working-class movement; and (6) the corrosive influence of the
Party’s extensive private property holdings, particularly in real
estate, which now account for the vast majority of its operating
revenue.
Defeating this retrograde trend within our Party is an absolutely
essential task. Without its defeat, there can be no successful struggle
for socialism.
February 19, 2010http://www.cpusa.org/convention-discussion-the-old-bug-of-opportunism-returns/

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We need a vanguard Communist Party USA - one that rejects the Imperialist 2-party monopoly, stands on its own two feet and fights for the working class in honesty and integrity.We used to be that party, and we can be again. But first we must purge the cancer of revisionism and Browderism from our ranks, that would have us betray our fellow workers to the Imperialist ruling class for the chance to sit at the table with them. We must carve it out, and taking a cue from William Z Foster, save our party by expelling those that seek to poison it.